Dream Conference Committees

Political Rights Committee

When we consider political rights, it’s all too easy to assume that people in the world are all on an equal playing field. It’s easy to assume that people in almost every country around the globe have voting rights, and it’s all too easy to assume that all, in general, are on equal political level playing field. In reality, various people must continue the fight to make their voices heard in the political lives of their communities and countries. In order to do so, people seek formal political positions in local, national, and international government posts, but are also just as active in grassroots political organizing on an oftentimes more informal basis.

Simply attaining the right to vote (while a major step) is not enough to ensure that all humans’ needs are attended to. As Joni Seager, author of The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World, reminds us, “the right to vote does not ensure the exercise of that right” (92). In other words, governmental prohibitions on the exercise of the right to vote, as well as physical and social barriers like displacement, illiteracy, familial pressure, and war (among other things) create a potent cocktail that interferes with the participation in formal government. Just as important, too, is the reality that until all voices are listened and attended to in governmental decision-making, the right to vote cannot translate into substantial gains on the ground; attaining voting rights, then, is simply the first step in a larger journey.

Educational Rights Committee

According to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), there are about one billion non-literate adults in the world today. This one billion makes up about 26% of the world’s adult population. To prevent the world’s illiteracy rate from growing, it is important for young people from both developed and developing countries to receive a well-established form of primary, secondary, and even postsecondary education. Unfortunately, education is not as accessible in other countries as it may seem to be in the U.S. and Europe.

In developing countries, inability to access education may be due to a lack of schools, a shortage of teachers, gender bias, religious concerns, and/or financial instability. However, even in wealthy developed nations access to quality education may be tied to economic status (class), or location (urban/rural). There are numerous factors that affect access to schooling, but the benefits of education are clear: an education reduces levels of poverty, increases health for family, increases economic opportunities for the family, and children whose parents have an education do better in school and have higher rates of immunization

Peace & Security Committee

While the rights and legal protection of those who are women, girls, part of racial and ethnic minorities and the poor are or could become victims of violence have dramatically improved in certain countries, violence continues to be a global crisis. Gender-based violence includes domestic violence, rape, sexual exploitation, forced abortion, sex trafficking and tourism, and state-sanctioned acts of violence. Such acts violate women’s basic human rights and can result in depression, physical and psychological suffering, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, hopelessness and death. Racial-based violence includes hate crimes, gang violence, unsafe passage to education and community, and racial profiling. Sexuality-based violence can include hate crimes as well, as well as the inability to share in the benefits of human rights.Those who are oppressed in some cases have no legal recourse to protect themselves from perpetrators, who sometimes include neighbors and members of their own family. Some of these injustices face the obstacle of the perception and treatment are private and individual matters. Certainly, the challenge of making violence a visible and pervasive human rights and public health concern is one critical starting point for advocacy.What organizations already exist in your local and national context to address the issues of violence? What kind of work is being done? In what ways does the government protect (or fail to protect) those from gender-based, racial-based, and sexuality-based violence? In what way does the government help those who have become victims of violence?

Economic Rights Committee

The majority of the world’s poor are a part of the global work force. they bear the brunt of poverty, providing and caring for their families. It is their labor that tries to compensate for diminished resources of a family or household (86). Clearly, the economic rights of the world’s poor, particularly the violation of those rights, remains a pressing issue in the fight for international human rights.What is the current poverty levels at your local, national, and global scale? What is counted as “work,” and what kinds of work are done by the underrepresented? Are there certain structures/systems in place (e.g. patriarchy, gender or racial discrimination, etc.) that amplify and sustain the level of poverty?

Environmental Rights Committee

All over the world, people are experiencing the effects of ecosystem decline, from water shortages to fish kills to landslides on deforested slopes. The victims of environmental degradation tend to belong to more vulnerable sectors of society—racial and ethnic minorities and the poor—who regularly carry a disproportionate burden of such abuse. Increasingly, many basic human rights are being placed at risk, as the right to health affected by contamination of resources, or the right to property and culture compromised by commercial intrusion into indigenous lands. Just as human rights advocates have tended to place only civil and political rights onto their agendas, environmentalists have tended to focus primarily on natural resource preservation without addressing human impacts of environmental abuse. All people have the right to access clean water now and in the future. Communities have the right to environmental education. Communities have the right to clean and accessible water supplies. Individuals have the right to use healthy environmental resources freely and equally as it promotes an equal society with free access. People have the right to a clean and healthy environment and to protect the ecosystem and their health. Communities have the right to access clean air, water, and land in turn promoting health.

In what ways does the government protect (or fail to protect) the environment? In what way does the government help those who have become victims of environmental injustice?

Health & Sexuality Committee

Health is an essential component of the well-being of all, men and women. According to the Beijing Platform for Action that emerged from the Fourth World Conference on Women, “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Women’s health involves their emotional, social and physical well-being and is determined by the social and economic context of their lives, as well as by biology.”[1] Although progress has been made in many countries to improve the health and well-being of women and girls, there is still a long way to go. One of the biggest obstacles to improving women and girls’ health is inequality –not just inequality between men and women, but between rural and urban populations, wealthy and poor populations, among people from different geographic regions, and among different ethnic and religious groups.

Poorer, developing countries where resources are severely limited and daily living conditions are harshest face the biggest challenges in improving well-being with regard to women and girls’ health and sexuality. HIV/AIDS continues to present a public health crisis, while less well known but critical access to reproductive healthcare, maternal and child health, and family planning remain concerns in these regions. At the same time, the practice of female genital circumcision or cutting has drawn worldwide attention, illuminating the problems that can arise when cultural traditions are challenged in the name of girls’ and women’s health.

Although developing countries face the most daunting obstacles to improving women’s health, it should be stressed that even in highly developed regions of the world, significant concerns remain. For example, in many European countries and the United States, less affluent sectors of the population, especially immigrants and ethnic minorities, receive poorer quality health care than more affluent sectors. HIV/AIDS affects the poor and minorities of these countries at far greater rates than it does the rest of the population. Access to family planning and pre- and post-natal care are precarious in many of these countries. Breast cancer and heart disease continue to be among the leading causes of death among women in industrialized countries.